<Begin Segment 4>

Q: What was your personal reaction to the way people were treating you?

CU: Okay, this is gonna kind of make me sound like a hero, which I wasn't, which I didn't even feel at the time. But from the Fresno Assembly Center, there was a crew of five hundred that were sent on to Jerome, Arkansas, to get the camp ready for the rest of the people. And during the train ride, we were let out, I think someplace either in Wyoming or I think it was Wyoming, out of the train in the middle of the prairie. They had a cordon of MPs completely surround the train, and we were told to get out and exercise. Now, when I got out, you know, I started to walk towards one of the MPs and right away, he released the safety on his, I guess it was Thompson machine gun. And he said, "Get back," so I stopped and I said, "Where am I gonna go?" He said, "Never mind, just get back." And I said, "Well, don't get nervous," so I moved back. When we got to Arkansas, the Arkies apparently had never seen Orientals before, let alone Japanese. We had people in our group that stood six foot one, six foot two, and they couldn't believe it, and there was a lot of hullabaloo going on, and we couldn't understand what the commotion was about. Come to find out, they had built tables and chairs for children. So they had to remake all the dining room benches and the dining room table, they had to enlarge the doorway to accommodate normal people, you know, height-wise.

So then we proceeded to get the camp ready. And when the first group of people arrived, it was wintertime, snowing, cold. There was a lot of old people, and they were given one blanket, the bag filled with straw for a mattress. And I asked the camp head, there was a Mr. Hayes and a Mr. Jenkins, "You know, for the older people, at least give them additional blankets," and he said, No." Well, being young, headstrong and hard-headed, I said, "One way or another, these people are gonna get extra blankets." And he says, "No." So me and several friends of mine, there was Mas Mitsui who is in Chicago, right now, there was a Ichiro Inouye, George Sasaki, myself, and Ben Tagami, I guess I was kind of the ringleader. I said, "Well, let's take one of those trucks. Go down to the warehouse and get the blankets, at which time Jenkins told the MPs to get their guns ready and he told me that if I made a move toward that truck, he would have them shoot. So I said, "Well, you go ahead and tell them to shoot."

[Interruption]

CU: He said, "You." So I turned around and looked at him and I asked him, "You speaking to me?" He said, "Yeah." He said, "I want you to get that roll of paper and take it up to the crane." I said, "Well, why don't you take it up yourself? You're not helpless." So we got into an argument, and when I get into an argument, I get pretty carried away. I called him every name in the book. And he picked up what they call a chipping hammer, you know, for welding. So I just waited, I had already spotted a piece of iron that had been cut in, like this. So I said, "Come on." So when he came and when he got maybe from here to that camera, I picked the slag, that metal and when he saw that, he dropped that chipping hammer and he took off. I chased him and he made the mistake of running up to the crane, overhead crane, where I chased him and I threw him over the side of that crane which is, oh, it's way up there. And I held on to his calf and feet and he's dangling, you know, head first. And people got all excited. They went after the management and he said, well, we're gonna, don't, "Whatever you do, don't drop him." And I was telling Ernie, I said, "You know, how do you feel right now?" I said, "I ever catch you calling Carl a boy and telling him to do things he doesn't want to do, which you can do," and I said, "Don't you ever ask me ever again," you know. So he was screaming that, "Let me up, pull me up, don't drop me." So after I pulled him up and I let him go, they called the cops. Cops came and put me in handcuffs. They took me into the office and they asked Ernie if he wanted to press charges, and he said no. So then they said, "Well, we're going to have to let you go." Now in those days, when they let you go, you had to have a pink slip. Without that pink slip, you can't get another job. So I ended up working for a Japanese family that was raising bean sprouts in a basement of their home, and working as a delivery boy for Chinese food that they used to make. It was kind of an interesting situation.

[Interruption]

CU: Okay, we started for the truck. The MPs took their safeties off their rifles, and I got inside the truck. I didn't pay any attention. Mas and Benny and Ichiro, all the guys followed. So there was kind of a stalemate there for a second. Jenkins had to make a decision. He had to either make good his threat or back down. I don't know what made him change his mind but he told the MPs to let us go. So I went to the warehouse, got the blankets, and got the old folks in good shape. I, all the inactivity in camp, you know, we weren't allowed any kind of activity. I started to teach a little judo, karate, and they said no martial arts. They would allow sumo.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1983, 2010 Densho and Steven Okazaki. All Rights Reserved.